Oak Class, Our First Days Back, 8.9.20
What a busy few days we have had back in Oak Class and the children have all grown in more ways than one. It has been delightful to be back amongst such a friendly, happy and delightful bunch.
We have been learning about worries that we might have and thinking of ideas that could help us solve them. When we revisited the school rules we discussed what they ‘look like’ and what we would expect to see. Today, we had our first trip to the library and chose our first books. This was particularly exciting and we are planning on visiting again in the week so we can change them after we have quizzed on them. Everyone was keen to be able to have a go on the Chromebooks. We have a few experts amongst us but a few of us will need to keep practising how to log in and create documents.
We are looking forward to more exciting learning and time spent with our friends.
We love see what you have been up to. It is wonderful to see so many of you completing the Google Forms. Please do keep sharing your learning with us through photos or sharing your documents online.
Here is a science project carried out. They thought carefully about the type of scientific enquiry they might do (observation, research or a test)
Learning about parts of a plant.
Learning about flowers.
Creating a glossary to help with using scientific words in an extended write.
Matching words to their meaning.
Finding features of fiction books.
John Dougherty author of over 30 books including ‘There’s a Pig Up My Nose’ and the ‘Stinkbomb and Ketchup Face’ series of books was in school reading extracts from his story and poetry books. John also played his guitar and sang songs with the children. There was time for questions and answers at the end of each session.
John stayed at the end of the day to sign copies of his books.
We are very grateful to The Helen Foundation for funding this event and the Pavilions Teignmouth for helping us to organise it.
Year 1 children were invited to the library after school where they enjoyed colouring in butterfly pictures and making butterflies. The session finished with the children listening to the ‘Monkey Puzzle’ story. There was some great audience participation.
The children all looked amazing in their World Book Day costumes, thank you to everyone that helped with the costumes.
In addition to dressing up for World Book Day, we held a Share a Million Stories assembly. The children sat and listened to a story called “Ameliaranne and the Green Umbrella” which is 100 years old! We also had a visitor from Morrisons in Teignmouth who presented us with a selection of books for our library, these were received by two of our librarians. Thank you very much Morrisons.
Foundation children were invited to the library after school where they enjoyed colouring in pictures of Zog and making Zog masks. The session finished with the children listening to the story of Zog with some great audience participation.
One of our hard-working librarians has been helping Mrs Hurt to collect the ‘Share a Million Stories’ totals from each of the classes.
The total of stories shared so far are a whopping 1374!
Well done everyone; keep on sharing!
Year Two have been enjoying the story George’s Marvellous Medicine. We took inspiration from George’s recipe and created our own concoctions. What would you include in yours?
Classes in Key Stage 2 are once again competing to see who can reach their class Accelerated Reader target first. Who will be the first to the sun?!
Wow, what a day we’ve had celebrating books and reading. The children made a wonderful effort with their costumes and absolutely loved being read to and sharing books with Year 4. What a treat!
Every morning in Oak class we really enjoy our reading and quizzing time. We enjoy discussing the new books we have chosen and we are all beginning to identify what we particularly like about specific genres, but also what we don’t like.
This afternoon, Oak class ventured to the library to choose our next reading books. We refreshed our memories of what our ranges are and chose appropriate books. Some of us have even decided to start a book club!
Today we were so lucky to have our Year 6 friends to read with us! 
Thank you Year 6!
Lots of children in Fir Class have made a fantastic start to the term and are already climbing the reading tree! How many more can get of the ground in the next few days I wonder?
Maple and Cherry Class got together today to listen to each other read, to make new friends and develop our love of books. What was your favourite book?
To celebrate World Book day, Oak Class have paired up and read stories to Willow Class. It was lovely to see the children sharing stories together!
Welcome back Year 3! We had a great day yesterday and have started our second day back by visiting the library. We have all chosen our first books of the year. Will any of us move up the tree this week? We hope so!
Ebony Class started this morning with a visit to our fantastic school library to choose new books and to take some time to devour the words from their books quietly. What a great way to start the week!
Take a look at those children edging their way up the reading tree.
The boys are currently leading the way.
A great start to the day in our wonderful book day costumes! We loved having visitors from Redwood class come and read to us this morning. Fantastic sharing and celebration of the written word.
World Book day is here and there is no better way to celebrate than reading your favourite books. Fir class travelled down to Maple and were able to share their fantastic fancy dress and stories that they enjoy.
Here are some pictures,
Willow Class and Redwood Class spent a lovey half hour sharing stories this morning. Redwood Class used their best reading voices to bring their stories to life!
Thanks to three children and sixty-six small dogs, reading targets have been smashed at Hazeldown School this term! Year 3 and 4 have been enjoying ‘Pugs of the Frozen North’ while Year 5 have all shared the story of ‘The Railway Children’ this term. Year 6 are almost finished with ‘The Wolf Wilder’ so I am expecting a turbo-charged surge from them very soon!
Congratulations to Bonsai Class who are this terms winners…..already! I wonder who will come second?
Well done everyone, keep reading!
It’s break time at Hazeldown and the Library is full of eager readers…
Cherry Class have just finished the book they received for Christmas, ‘Pugs of the Frozen North.’ It was a FANTASTIC book which had them laughing out loud at various points. They’ve chosen to read ‘The BFG’ yet – hopefully it will be just as good!
After a term spent doing lots of reading, these are the final positions on the reading tree. Look how many children exceeded their targets and ended up on the ceiling!!
A huge THANKYOU to everyone who visited our book fair at the start of this half term. I have been able to purchase £350 worth of books and resources for our library from commission through sales.
So, all my many Tom Gates fans will be pleased to see…
Holly Class!
Congratulations Holly Class, you have collectively reached 100% of your reading target!
Now the race for second continues…
We are now at the halfway point in the race to reach our class reading targets this term! Holly Class are just about holding on to their early lead with 69% of their class target reached. Hot on their heels are Monkey Puzzle Class with 68%, with Cherry Class in third place with 60% of their target complete. Joint fourth is held by Ebony Class and Fir Class on 58% with Oak Class exactly half way on 50%. Bringing up the rear are Bonsai Class and Redwood Class both with 47% of their target reached.
Help your class along by doing lots of reading over half term and quizzing on our return to school on Monday 31st October.
Happy Reading everyone!
What a lovely morning Ebony Class have had in the library. It was great to see so many children lost within their story worlds.
Keep up the amazing reading guys!!
What great maturity shown this afternoon by half of Ebony class as they read a chapter of our class text: Holes, by Louis Sachar.
They took themselves to a quiet space, took turns reading out loud, whilst the others followed along in their books. Clearly, they are enjoying the text and cannot wait to read the next bit!
There are two front runners on our reading tree at the moment and they’re aiming for the top. Come on Apple Class you all can do it.
Oliver is still in the lead on Cherry Class’s AR tree, but Ava and Joe are catching him fast! If you haven’t started climbing the tree yet, make sure you quiz this week!
These children are already off the mark and progressing towards their reading targets! Congratulations for quizzing on your book!
Lets see how many of you can make it onto the tree by the end of next week!
Remember we are also competing against other classes! Let’s make it a team effort…
Some of Cherry Class have already started making good progress towards their term’s reading target on Accelerated Reading. When we looked today, one person has already achieved 14% of their target and so has begun to climb our class cherry tree…
If you haven’t quizzed yet, try to finish your reading book over the weekend so that you can quiz on Monday!
Monkey Puzzle class have taken an early lead in the race to 100%! Each week I will work out how many points each class has scored towards sir collective target and the race will continue!
Following a close second are Fir and Ebony class, with Oak class hot on their heels!
Come on Holly, Bomsai, Redwood and Cherry – you can do it!
The children in Fir class have been inspired to read this week and have already started to make progress towards their targets!
Keep a look out for an update every Friday!! Will you be stood in front of the tree next?
What an amazing morning! Year Six have been so fortunate to have a workshop, have stories told and be inspired by the talented author, John Townsend, who has written over 200 books!
The children were so engaged and enthused by his anecdotes ands stories along with his sound effects and asked some amazing questions. He is definitely someone the children, who want to be writers, can aspire to be like!
Cherry Class have had great fun today learning to play a reading game called ‘Match It’. This game is similar to Uno but lets us practice our reading skills at the same time. We had excellent fun trying to get rid of all of our cards before our friends!
The game comes from a set called TRUGS which stands for ‘Teaching Reading Using GameS’. If you have been enjoying the games in class, you may want to think about asking for the home version for Christmas (available from www.readsuccessfully.com).
At the end of a busy half term, it is nice to take a few minutes to sit and relax with a friend. The children in Willow Class had fun sharing their favourite books with each other and taking it in turns to read different characters and pages.
Some of us chose non-fiction books to brush up on all our knowledge.
We have been focussing on our expression during our Guided Reading sessions and made sure to use this when we were reading.
Well done everyone! Have a happy half term break!
Year 5 have started their next literacy block of story writing this week and today they got to listen to the story of ‘The Mousehole Cat’ by Nicola Bayley. This book is being used as our inspiration and exemplar text for the block and the children did incredibly well to identify similes, alliteration, metaphors, personifications as well as many other things whilst I was reading the story.
Have you read this book?
Get your copy from the library and get immersed in this wonderful story!
The first member of ebony class has reached the top of the reading tree. This is a fantastic achievement and shows dedication to their reading and wanting to succeed. Not only has she reached 100%, she is well on her way to 200%.
We have achieved our Accelerated Reading target!
Some of us have even doubled, trebled or quadrupled our targets!
This morning, Monkey Puzzle have been completing their reading ‘Star Tests’ to set a new reading range for the Easter holidays.
Do you you think your reading range has gone up?
To celebrate World Book Day, the children at Hazeldown School have been bringing in their old books to exchange for new ones to read!
Year 4 enjoyed the drama workshops to kick off Book Week!
Next week, we will start our new topic ‘A World of Fantasy’ which coincides with book week. The children will be writing their own fantasy/adventure story and make a movie trailer to advertise it!
Have a look at the plan to see the other exciting things we are doing which relate to the topic!
Can you think of other activities which relate to the topic which we could possibly include in our SOLE work?
Fir class have started reading ‘Bill’s New Frock’ in preparation for book week. Don’t forget to decide which Anne Fine character to dress up as on book day…
We have achieved our reading targets!